The invention relates to conveyor ovens for continuously baking or broiling food products.
In high volume restaurant operations, deck ovens, traditionally used for pizza, for example, have been successfully replaced by conveyor ovens which cut cooking time almost in half. Conveyor oven systems typically use a continuous open link conveyor belt to carry individual food products through a heated oven tunnel. The oven tunnel has openings through which the respective ends of the conveyor extend sufficiently to make it convenient for operators to start incoming food products on one end of the belt and to retrieve cooked products from the other end.
Customer feedback indicates that, to be successful, pizza chains must offer variety and fast service. By its nature, however, pizza is best cooked to order. For high volume operations, pizzas of the same quality as that produced by deck ovens must traverse the conveyor oven in rapid succession. Microwave cooking is not the answer because it tends to dry out food and is not generally conducive to the biochemical reactions which take place in conventional bread or dough baking. Moreover, conveyor ovens offer a better flow of orders through the kitchen than a battery of microwave ovens would permit. In this context, today's commercial conveyor ovens are open to optimization for increased throughput without compromising quality. Decreased cooking time without compromise offers fast food service several benefits.
First, because pizza is commonly perceived as "fast food", customer satisfaction is actually enhanced by serving individualized orders faster. Second, the volume of customer orders served can be increased without sacrificing quality or price. Third, in multiple oven environments, the same collective throughput can be achieved with fewer ovens, thus decreasing capital outlays.
Ideally, conveyor ovens suitable for thick crust pizza should also be able to cook and warm a broad variety of other foods: seafood, Mexican food, hot dogs, sausage, sandwiches, casseroles, biscuits, muffins, etc. In addition, energy consumption should be as low as possible. Thus, a need exists for improving the design of conventional conveyor ovens to produce high quality cooked food products in less time.